In our attempt to
reinterpret and perhaps make some sense out of Greek thought and philosophy, we
start at the most obvious beginning, Homer, and in particular, The Iliad.
Our choice is justified not simply by the fact that this is the earliest
material available but also by the role of The Iliad in Greek
society.

Fifth-century authors, such as Herodotus and
Thucydides, speak of Homeric epic as the outstanding classical and virtually
canonical text of antiquity.1

In another passage Cyrus Gordon compares its
influence on the Greeks to that of The Bible on the Hebrews. J.B. Bury
reports that Alexander the Great kept a copy by his bedside. Similarly, the
Romans thought highly of Homeric wisdom and influence in asserting that,
unfortunately:

aliquando bonus dormitat
Homerus

Obviously, The Iliad
is a fine tale, a little slow-going in translation perhaps, but from a
contemporary perspective could one truly regard it as canonical or pretend that
this story of the "anger of Peleus' son Achilleus" measures up to The
Bible? At first glance, the answer is obviously not. My second reaction is
that evidently it did have this influence at which point one is forced to
reconsider the whole matter in attempting to account for its long and powerful
influence. I contend that this must be accounted for before one can meaningfully
interpret the environment in which the more formally designated 'philosophers'
worked and to which their thoughts were a response. One
can take the obvious tack of saying that it was a kind of book of manners,
designating the way in which interpersonal relations should be carried out. It
gives models of friendship and courage and, though it is not exactly a Book
of the Courtier, it does provide some behavioral guidance. However, the
nature of this guidance is key and makes this position untenable beyond a simple
recognition that it may well have had this effect. A passage like Achilleus'
speech to Hector:

Hector, argue me no
arguments, I cannot forgive you.2I wish only that my spirit and fury would drive me to hack your meat
away and eat it raw for the things you have done to
me.3

In the translation of a passage like this one
is rather apt to miss the point. If a translator goes for word-for-word
accuracy, he is going to lose the passion in the Greek in the over-rationalized
and emotionally crippled medium of modern English. In an effort to touch on some
of the original meaning, my own translation is as follows:

Hector, don't waste your words. I know
you!I'd so love to tear the meat
off your bones and eat it raw for what you've done to me.

In any case, this is rather far from a
restrained book of etiquette and if it affected manners one might posit that its
influence would in fact be negative assuming one takes moderation as a positive
behavioral criterion. Perhaps we had best look elsewhere for the source of its
power and impact.

I wish that strife (eriV) would vanish away from among gods
and mortals,and gall, which makes a man grow angry for all his great mind,that gall
of anger that swarms like smoke inside a man's
heartand becomes a thing sweeter to him by far than the dripping of
honey.4

If it were a man's to
choose, would be not choose to feel good all his time in life? Why then do men
suffer from such emotional variability? I contend that, in The Iliad, we
are faced with a basically foreign concept of mind and the inter-relationship of
emotional, intellectual and physical reality, or more basically of mind and
matter. What we encounter is a long way from the Cartesian duality. Even some of
the gods are simply emotions.

Zeus sent down in speed to the fast ships of
the Achaians the wearisome goddess of Hate, holding in her hands the portent
of battle. . .There the goddess took her place and cried out a great cry and
terrible and loud, and put strength in all the Achaians hearts; to go on
tirelessly with their fighting of battles. And now battle became sweeter to
them than to go back in their hollow ships to the beloved land of their
fathers.

Hate (EriV), the
Lady of Sorrow, was gladdened to watch
them.5

or again:

all about which Terror hangs like a garland,
and Hatred is there, and Battle Strength and heart freezing Onslaught. . . and
Terror drove them, and Fear, and Hate whose wrath is
relentless.6

Our interpretation will be that we are faced
with an inversion of our conception of reality. Instead of holding the
individual constant and his emotions as variables, in The Iliad the
emotions are the constants and their environmental expression the variable.
Emotions are field beyond man's real control. What causes them to change and
what relationship is there between them and physical reality and further, what
is their relationship with the individuals that feel them?
Primarily, we find the fundamental assumption of not only the validity of the
emotions but of a strong interaction between, or, rather, a lack of distinction
between psychic and physical reality. The two are inextricably interwoven like a
tapestry in which the threads are the lines of purpose that lead to the
realization of certain reality, the total of the interacting participants. One
sees plans within plans within plans with emotions as a kind of reality test as
to the state of ones particular purpose. So says Hera:

Even one who is mortal will try to accomplish
his purpose for another, though he be a man and knows not such wisdom as we
do. . .How could I not weave sorrows for the men of Troy, when I hate
them.7

Let us first look at the
role of mortals in the pattern before considering the gods more fully. The power
and purpose of mortals is not entirely to be dispised nor their ability to
perceive the workings around and within them for these two are
one.

The heart was shaken within him; to avoid
death he shrank into the host of his own
companions.8

For to feel evil within is to fight its coming
into reality by containing it within ones own strength as one "who within the
heart is armed with astute thoughts".9Or, as with Agamemnon fighting
his fear in the night:

Terribly I am in dread for the Danaans nor
does my pulse beat steadily, but I go distractedly, and my heart is pounding
through my chest, and my shining limbs are shaken beneath
me.10

Does he not suffer in order that the reality
conform to his purpose? This fear is not a sign of any cowardice, it is an
emotion to be felt and either supported or denied and fought out of existence
through knowledge and suffering. For circumstances are manipulable. Reality in
the future is built partially on the thoughts and actions of the present. As
Priam admonishes:

Do not hold me back when I would be going,
neither yourself be a bird of bad omen in my palace. You will not persuade
me.11

For emotions are influenced by words and by
simple extension so is the reality in which one exists. Thus we are exposed to
the importance of the astute mind in interpreting reality and determining
appropriate responses to a given situation. One can see that calling Odysseus
the equal of Zeus in counsel is not mean compliment but implies that he can
grasp the most active and viable alternatives for satisfactory resolution of a
difficult emotional/real situation.

But Zeus does not bring to accomplishment all
thoughts in men's minds.12

It has often been said that
the Greek gods are anthropomorphic, mere extensions of human strengths and
failings into divinity. This is somewhat like saying that The Iliad is a
book of etiquette. The Greek gods in The Iliad express a singularly
elegant and useful account of the nature of reality and of change in reality.
The interrelationships among the gods, the source of their powers and
weaknesses, are all made clear. Their role in the determination of reality and
the reason for their taking this role are also exposed.

Zeus whose purposes are infinite. . .Zeus
builds up and Zeus diminishes the strength in men, the way he pleases, since
his power is beyond all others.13

The key to our discussion is that the source of
this power is not but an extension of what gives power to men. Zeus has power
because Zeus is in a concordant relationship with the causes of change and this
concord is not derived arbitrarily but rather, in that Zeus knows more and is a
better guide to the participants in his mind than any other, his purposes are
infinite--therefore, to please him is to fulfill those purposes. His power comes
from the superiority of his designs to any others.

Hera, do not go on hoping that you will hear
all my thoughts, since these will be too hard for you, though you are my wife.
Any thought that is right for you to listen to, no one neither man nor any
immortal shall hear it before you. But anything that apart from the rest of
the gods I wish to plan, do not always question each detail nor probe
me.14

The nature of the dominion of Zeus becomes
clear in a statement of Poseidon when his designs came into conflict with the
will of Zeus:

Therefore I am no part of the mind of Zeus.
Let him in tranquility and powerful as he is stay satisfied with his third
share. And let him absolutely stop frightening me, as if I were mean, with his
hands.15

What is the mind of Zeus? It is that which
extends between the power called up by his purpose and its actualization in
reality. It is clearly not an isolated but a participant system.

Now let no female divinity, nor male god
either, presume to cut across the way of my word, but consent to it all of
you, so that I can make an end in speed of these
matters.16

One might usefully look at it in terms of a
purpose as the function of the desire to actualize some feeling and its strength
as defined by the both the height of the feeling being sought in reality and the
knowledge linking that feeling with its physical expression.

We referred before to plans
within plans. One might posit that superior strength would come out of
containing the designs of others within ones perspective such that their
alternative actions are accounted for within your designs. This interpretation
is confirmed by a challenge by Zeus:

Let down out of the sky a cord of gold; lay
hold of it all of you who are gods and all who are goddesses, yet not even so
can you drag down Zeus from the sky to the ground, not Zeus the high lord of
counsel, though you try until you grow weary.17

The connected nature of power is again seen in
a confrontation between Pallas Athene and Ares in which she
says:

You child, you did not think even this time
how much stronger I can claim to be than you, when you match your fury against
me. Therefore, you are paying atonement for your mother's furies since she is
angry and wishes you ill, because you abandoned the Achaians and have given
your aid to the insolent Trojans.18

Obviously part of Ares' power is drawn from his
relationship with his mother and to go against her will is not simply to lose
this power but to invert it. Powerful emotions are seen in this as defining
their own expression in reality or, as Hera was quoted earlier
saying:

How could I not weave sorrows for the men of
Troy, when I hate them.

We have spoken of gods and
mortals but not of the relationship between them other than to say that they
both operate in the same reality and so can be seen as analogous in at least
their basic modalities in dealing with that reality. The range of relationship
between men and gods runs from the distant manipulation of
Zeus--

There are two urns that stand on the
door-sill of Zeus. They are unlike for the gifts they bestow: an urn of evils,
an urn of blessings. If Zeus who delights in thunder mingles these and bestows
them on man, he shifts, and moves now in evil, again in good fortune. But when
Zeus bestows from the urn of sorrows, he makes a failure of man, and the evil
hunger drives him over the shining earth, and he wanders respected neither of
gods nor mortals. 19

to the very active intervention of Ares in
Hector.

Ares the dangerous war god entered him, so
that the inward body was packed full of force and strength.
20

Men, because of their limited knowledge and
power, are subject to the manipulation of the gods as their purposes are
contained and used by the gods toward the gods' ends. There is even a goddess of
this faculty. Says Agamemnon:

Delusion (Ath) is
the elder daughter of Zeus, the accursed one who deludes all; her feet are
delicate and they step not on the firm earth, but she walks in the air above
men's heads and leads them astray. She has entangled others before
me.21

This metaphor is particularly interesting in
that it could be interpreted that her delusion is based on her bringing about
completion of emotional disatisfaction with reality not on the 'firm earth' but
in 'the air over men's heads'--i.e., beyond their knowledge. Thus would a
conflict seemingly be wrestled into resolution when in fact it remains 'in the
air', not in true relationship with reality and the actual situation that the
defines a given anticipated emotion.

Achilleus is often spoken of
as a tragic figure. In a sense, that anachronistic designation is descriptive
but in a more contemporary and perhaps more interesting sense he is considerably
more than that. As shown in our first quote, Achilleus himself chose an infinite
purpose. He chose to revolt against strife not only in himself but among gods
and men. His purpose stretched to include all and yet to act on such a purpose
as a man is to transcend human behavioral systems and beyond that even the
behavioral systems of the gods. As says Zeus:

No, you gods; you desire to help this cursed
Achilleus within whose breast there are no feelings of justice, nor can he be
bent, but his purpose is fierce like a lion. . .so Achilleus has destroyed
pity and there is not in him any shame; which does much harm to men but
profits them also. . .Great as he is, let him take care not to make us angry;
for see, he does dishonor to the dumb earth in his
fury.22

Achilleus chose a stand beyond his knowledge to
actualize to such an extent that his actions, as a result of this stand, were
out of accord not only with the wills that shape reality but with 'the dumb
earth' itself, the very stuff that forms what is. Thus by fomenting natural
resistence to yet another imposed and manifestly unworkable solution did Zeus
mount his defense against justice. Verily, Zeus has much to fear considering the
appalling cacocracy we know in Homer, later so graphically captured by
Aeschylus:

Exuding
the glowing assurance of a used-car salesman and often at the point of a sword,
with screams and the crackling flames of the auto-da-fé in the background, Christianity has force-fed us
of a shifting vision of a God of Love for centuries. But what does love have to
do with any of it? Is this not simply a question of power and control, tyranny
and impunity? Who could fail to suspect that the desperate confrontation mapped
out by the Ancient Greeks is what has marked, scarred, determined the horrendous
travesty of human history? Primal eriV, existence's
furious strife as it is raped, tortured, contorted and perverted to amuse the
neoteroi
theoi, the unconscionable,
inutterably cruel "younger gods" and their human wanna-bes, surely accounts for
our bloody path of auto-immolation far better than any other
explanation.